Tue 20 Jul 2010
A Review by Curt Evans: CARTER DICKSON – The Reader Is Warned.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[3] Comments
CARTER DICKSON – The Reader Is Warned. William Morrow & Co., US, hardcover, 1939. Wm.Heinemann, UK, hc, 1939. Reprinted many times in both hardcover and paperback, including: Pocket #303, 1945; Berkley F972, 1964; International Polygonics, 1989.
A decade or so ago I offhandedly pronounced The Reader Is Warned the best John Dickson Carr novel in the Sir Henry Merrivale series (written under Carr’s pseudonym Carter Dickson). After rereading it I would say I prefer the plainer and comparatively more sober courtroom classic, The Judas Window, but I still rate The Reader is Warned quite highly.
What people rightly love about The Reader is Warned is its exceptional impossibility and the sinister idea of “teleforce.” A mysterious psychic, Herman Pennik, pronounces that one of the people at a country house gathering will die at a certain time; and, sure enough, that person does die.
No indication of how the man came to die can be found. Pennik helpfully declares he killed the man psychically, through the operation of teleforce.
The next day, the man’s widow challenges Pennik as a fraud and he, nettled by the challenge, tells her that she too will die by the means of his teleforce. And she does indeed die. But how she came to die is yet another mystery. Could it really have been due to teleforce?!
One can think of thrillers with outlandish premises like this one that ultimately disappoint, but, amazingly, Carr comes up with a plausible (well, by Golden Age standards, anyway) and fairly-clued solution.
The resolution, which involves a rather melodramatic and implausible trap and a quite incredibly garrulous murderer, is the main weakness of the tale, I think. But the “teleforce” idea that the tale is built around is a brilliant, bravura device and the last lines of the book are unusually thoughtful for Carr (if perhaps a bit optimistic — one thinks of the advent of atomic weaponry).
Despite my praise of this book a decade ago, in the intervening years I actually had forgotten the culprit and the method. (I find I often forget those details in Carr, but never in Christie.) On the rereading, I saw indications of who the murderer might be be, but I had trouble with the motive question, because I missed another point completely. But it is all is fairly clued, I maintain!
As for the method, I was pleased to find it rather John Street-ish. In fact, is some ways the novel is similar to one by Major Street from the same year. Since the two men were working on Drop to His Death/Fatal Descent at this time, I suspect they may have discussed the particular murder method in Reader as well.
Whatever input Street may or may not have on the murder method, the exuberant narrative is all John Dickson Carr. The Reader Is Warned is one of Carr’s most brilliantly constructed and engagingly told detective novels.
Editorial Comment: Curt has recently been re-reading a number of books by John Dickson Carr. This is the sixth, and currently the last in a series of reviews he wrote as a result. He Wouldn’t Kill Patience, also as by Carter Dickson, was the fifth, and you can read it here.
July 20th, 2010 at 7:34 pm
I think HE WOULDN’T KILL PATIENCE is my favorite Merrivale with this and THE JUDAS WINDOW tied for second. It’s hard to choose between HM’s brilliant and insulting address to the jury in WINDOW and the “teleforce” here.
Most of the early HM’s are good if only because Carr is clearly enjoying himself and relishing the freedom HM afforded his sense of the absurd and the bizarre.
Curt
I hope the book you are working on has at least a section on the collaboration and friendship between Street and Carr. I was aware of it, but perhaps not how far it went beyond the book together. You’ve mentioned it several times in relation to these Carr reviews and I would be fascinated to know more. I wonder did the influence run both ways, and did Carr have a similar influence on some of Street’s work?
July 21st, 2010 at 5:10 pm
I really enjoyed this book. Not only is the central idea clever, but for once the events in the story have some sort of effect on the outside world. Carr is very good at suggesting the panicked fascination of the public. Although the final words do read rather ironically nowadays, the central idea is valid. In the UK we have recently been panicked by the media about such threats as bird-flu and swine-flu. The medical authorities have only just admitted that they may have overstated the danger…
One of the joys of the book is the way that you absolutely know that the central idea must be phony…but how? Explaining the impossible is one of the things that I adore about Carr’s stuff.
July 21st, 2010 at 6:37 pm
Yes, it’s interesting to see how Street used a similar method the same year in one of his book; and, while it’s a good, solid, interesting mystery, it’s lacking that high genius of the teleforce concept.
Explaining the impossible, that is Carr’s greatest contribution, I think.
David, this book clearly influenced J. J. Connington’s Jack-in-the-Box (praised by Anthony Boucher).